Mmm ... fuzzy food!

I've spent much of the last few months making Christmas presents for my family and friends. Surprisingly, I got just about everything done I had hoped to do, and even on time. One thing I did finish Christmas day, but still, that's pretty close for me.

Anyway, one of the projects I was working on was some felt food. I love making this stuff, but it does take a lot of time since I do it all by hand. I started around Thanksgiving and got some cute stuff done. I didn't take photos of it all -- there was a slice of swiss cheese and a spread of peanut butter -- but here is what I ended up with.

Jelly


Carrot


Bacon


Bread


Fried egg


Broccoli



I was working on these during my trip to my parents' house over Thanksgiving and while I was there, my teenage niece really liked the food. I was trying to think of gifts to make for her and thought there wasn't much she could do with the lifesize food, but I should either go really small, like a keychain size, or really big, like a pillow. I decided to try to go big.

Luckily the non fuzzy-producing fleece was on sale at Joann's when I went there and even found a remnant of cream ... which was half off the half off. Yay! I also bought a bit of tan for the crust.

I traced half a slice of bread on a sheet of 8.5" by 11" paper then pinned that to a fold of the light cream and cut out two like that. I cut some strips of the tan for the crust. Before I put it together, I had to make the face, so I used a smile made out of felt and some safety eyes. Then I assembled it on the sewing machine and stuffed it with an entire bag of stuffing! Fluffy bread!

And here it is:


This was by far the most-appreciated gift this year! Stephani loved it and hardly put it down the entire Christmas visit. That definitely made me happy.

Typical me

Ha! I should have known that the goal to do something new everyday would be a stretch. I may have to scale that back to once a week or something.

I have been productive though, believe it or not. I finally(!!!) got through book 6 and 7 of Harry Potter. They've been on my to-read list forever and a day, but I never got to them. So bummed that I didn't read them sooner; they were rather awesome.

I've also joined a swap on craftster.com, which seriously is rather addictive. I've been saving 1.5" fabric squares for years and years, planning to make a postage stamp quilt. My goal is to have every block be different, but that is really hard! I have the pieces separated into baggies of each color, and that works fine, but after you collect so many it's hard to keep the baggies without having doubles.

Anyway, the swap I joined was to exchange 1.5" squares. I swapped with nine other people -- we each sent each other 60 pieces. It is so nice to check the mail and get something besides bills! I've gotten a ton of cool fabrics, but of course now I have the daunting task of sorting through all the pieces and compare them with what I have. I have no idea how many I need to make the quilt. I've never even counted what I have ... I may already have too many, who knows? I should make an effort to count though. I doubt I want to make multiple postage stamp quilts.

I have a ton of scraps, so I've been cutting my pieces for everyone else from those. Not only do I have scraps from my own projects, but other quilters I know know that I will save just about any little piece. I often get scrap hand-me-downs, which thrills me beyond measure. I just love to sort through all the pieces and see all the different fabrics.

I've been busy with projects as well. I've made a few things out of felt.

I made this cupcake to use as a pincushion:

And this felt doughnut just for fun:

I also have this quilt top completed and I've started working on the quilting. I've been lazy about taking new photos, but since I took this I added a black polka dot border around the outside and the quilting so far is really cool. I'm doing it in various circles of different sizes, with no specific pattern. I'm doing a ton of thread colors. So far I'm really happy with it.

Here's a few pictures of the top: